Search

As we all know, this is a forum for Kingdom Hearts. Even so, if anybody posts spoilers for Endgame anywhere on this site without spoiler tags, you will be banned.
If you change your avatar to something related to Endgame, you will be banned.
If you put something in your signature, send a message to somebody that is visibly seen, or share spoilers with somebody who does not wish to see them, you will be banned.

Not understanding the story of KH3 is like failing a test you had 13 years to study for

Go to page

New member

Every negative KH3 review in a nutshell: "I've played both Kingdom Hearts 1&2, so I know what I'm talking about when it comes to the Lore of the series, yet the story was just too confusing for me."

If your teacher gives you a study guide and tells you which chapters to read in the textbook for an upcoming test in 13 years from now, you'd have to be incredibly lazy to not pass the test.

The whole series has been remade on next gen consoles, and there are several games in one disc (KH 1.5+2.5, KH 2.8) either the whole game or cutscenes explaining most of the story. PLUS if (for whatever reason) you don't want to play the games, there is this website called YOUTUBE that has FULL MOVIES of all the cutscenes of each game. Also, it should be well known that most Disney world's plots have almost no impact on the main story as a whole so you can easily skip the Disney cutscenes and focus on original world ones and you should understand the story quiet well if you pay attention. Also the Ansem/Xehanort reports can be found online easily and can be read within a minute.

Overall KH3's story is a straight forward one(no flashbacks, no going back in time), the only thing I would say that would be confusing to someone who doesn't follow the story is who the original characters(outside of Sora) are and what their role in previous games has been. But, if you know all that then the story should make sense to you.

If you decide to only watch the MAIN STORY scenes from every game combined on Youtube, it should take about 7 hours.

So yeah, for those you who say KH3's story is confusing, all I have to say is "You really couldn't find 7 hours in the 13 years you've waited to study for the KH3 story test? Come on."

play a love song

Yeah, it's not so much a matter of not understanding what's happening in the story as it is the presentation of the story being so weak that there's no reason to care about what's going on. You can practically see the laundry list of plot points being checked off as they go. It's a facade of a story being told through emotionless jargon and exposition. It's not that people don't understand the details of the story, it's that the story becomes unintelligible because it's structureless and bloated.

Bronze Member

As someone who's played nearly every game in this series bar Chi, there are still things that are occasionally confusing. That's more because the story is so shoddily presented than anything else. I think the series merits any/all criticism it receives for both its hot mess of a story and the console spread, so professional reviews that focus on one or both of those problems are fine, imo.

Y'know, this seems to imply that if you give any human person a task to achieve 13 years from now on they'll start studying like crazy and put in good effort the moment you leave them.
And that's just not how we work at all.
Dammit, I was barely able to make myself study for exams due in a few months, give me 13 years to prepare for and after not even 2 I'd probably even forget what I needed to do.

I say you'd have to be incredibly human and normal not to pass that test.

Overall KH3's story is a straight forward one(no flashbacks, no going back in time), the only thing I would say that would be confusing to someone who doesn't follow the story is who the original characters(outside of Sora) are and what their role in previous games has been. But, if you know all that then the story should make sense to you.

Flashbacks and time travels are far from the only ways to make the story jump from place to place.
KH III is all but straightforward, and there are lenghty cutscenes where the characters stand still and talk about events from the past.
It's hard for me to talk from the perspective of someone who's going less than prepared into KH III, but I gotta imagine that all that sudden talk about Replicas and time travels (which aren't in the game but are definitely brought back and discussed) and an almost never mentioned before Power of Waking wasn't exactly simple math.

Or, as some members of the forum made me realize, the cutscene with Aqua, Ansem the Wise and Ansem Seeker of Darkness, which doesn't fit in any place in the main timeline and even when treated as a flashback creates some continuity errors.
No amount of studying prepares you to understand that.

That's kind of presumptuos and also a bit iffy in reasoning.
First of all, not all people actually waited 13 years for KH III (which has also been established to be kind of a fruitful effort, considering -and I borrow your rethoric here- if one decided to take their time and look into interviews they'd know a KH III wasn't going to be made anytime soon), and even those who waited this long or close to it, it's not like there's only KH in their lives, or at least I hope not.
I'd also like to point out that 13 years ago there was far less KH material to "study" for, and that a lot of stuff that made KH III even more confusing came in these last few years with X/Ux stuff.

Going back to your example of a test, it's like if you give me 13 years to prep for an algebra exam and you release the truly hard stuff towards the very end. If you do that, you definitely did not give me "13 years" to study for the exam.

Regarding the main point of the discussion, I'm here and there. Theoretically, any piece of media should have some level of understanding even by itself, without needing every single part of the big mosaic to function. I strongly disagree with the way the Xehanort saga was handled and I think that telling people "argh, why don't you look at all these plot summaries, buy all these games, get accustomed to all these different types of gameplay, and invest so much energy into this decade project?" is ridiculous.
Like, let me say that the very concept of imposing people to get SEVEN HOURS worth of convoluted content to play a friggin game is not how things should be at all.

I think that professional reviews should be handled by people who have vast knowledge about the object of the discussion, but I also know that not all negative reviews of KH III criticized the story because the person only played KH and KH II, and that even those who know all of it can and did have issues with its story and the way it was told.
But mostly I just wanted to point out that your way of thinking operates on some sillogism that isn't in fact all that accurate.

the only villain on staff

I don’t disagree with you, OP, but KH3 doesn’t really present its story well near the end when it all gets crammed in, and there are still details even many people who have followed the series for years are confused about because of how poorly certain things were presented.

It’s like if your teacher gave you the study guides and then gives you the test and the test has material from later chapters that you weren’t assigned to read and it’s is also in a coded language.

And your teacher also stabs one of your classmates to death during the test.

(Mind you, I have read analyses and have my own theories about the game so I personally think the delivery was intentional but that doesn’t help how it is perceived by others)

New member

I've always seen Kingdom Hearts games as games that you play, and then you play them again differently, and then again differently, and each time you understand bits that are referenced later as they are happening, and I've always loved that about the games. So if Kingdom Hearts III is considered to have a complex story then that's fine, and I have been meaning to make my second playthrough after exams, though I don't really think it was all that much more complicated than previous titles in the series.

With that said, quality and fluency are completely subjective in this context. For someone who is less than prepared with the lore of Kingdom Hearts, or saw advertisements and hype for Kingdom Hearts III and decided to jump in then and there (as I did with Kingdom Hearts II), I would not expect them to have a clear understanding of the story. Unfortunately, Kingdom Hearts does not lend itself well to constant recapping and hand-holding as much as it would like to have you think otherwise, so for those people it's either play/watch the other titles, or just accept there are story elements which will go over your head (which is, I think, in this context, fine).

I adored Kingdom Hearts III and don't like constant nitpicking at it, but the way the story was told was somewhat messy, and it's clear that there's a difficulty in balancing the series' long-standing gimmick of visiting Disney worlds and enacting the plots of those movies with telling the relevant plot of the story. That, I think, is why it appears to be all over the place. I can't tell if the 'rushed' conclusion (the Keyblade Graveyard was a few hours long, to be fair, but many people felt it was rushed) was due to a problem with this balance or a deliberate attempt to adrenalise us, but it needs to be addressed somewhere down the line.

The game does, however, create, reference and develop concepts which will be difficult to immediately grasp (and which will no doubt be relevant to the future of Uχ and subsequent Kingdom Hearts games), and I feel like playing through the game, and previous games, again would not only be beneficial, but also what I would expect from Kingdom Hearts.

red gay

Hm, so...I played nearly every KH game multiple times, but I still find KH3 absolutely wack and not worthy as a closure to the saga....
But clearly that's not possible, as only people who played KH1&2 have negative opinions regarding KH3. Interesting.

Active member

I mean... To some degree, I can agree with the OP but it's not like people call the series convoluted for no reason. There's a lot to remember, and if you're not as invested into the series, it's just gonna sound like Adult Speech in Charlie Brown cartoons.

Some people just didn't like what KH3 had to offer, and that's okay. I personally thought it was pretty easy to understand, but that's because I'm super invested into the franchise, it's my favorite thing in the world. But, I can't expect everyone to be the same as me, and Nomura also can't always be writing stories with plot points that don't quite have the execution nailed and expect that to fly all the time.

In my personal opinion, if you're gonna dive into KH3 and never played the games after 2, you're in for a rough time. But there's a lot of reasons why some may not have been able to. For example, if you own an Xbox One, you're outta luck because there's no compilations there OR 2.8, you'd have to get a PS4 if you wanted to catch up. But I think if someone deliberately says "I'm not playing the side games", and then plays KH3 and ends up completely confused... Well. You were warned lmao.

In a perfect world, they would've written KH3's story where it gave a perfect recap in a clean manner so where you can be up to date and understand exactly what's going on, and they tried, but there's so much plot points to touch on that you're better off just experiencing the stories for yourself. Like imagine trying to tell someone DDD as clear and concise as possible. It's gonna take a bit.

Agreed. KH3 was a bit too concerned with setting the stage for the next saga that it forgot that it was the ending to its own saga. The pacing of the main plot didn’t really help, either.

I really do think we needed a game that focused o Xehanort so we could have a better sense of who he once was, where he was coming from, and how he became the Xehanort we learn about in BBS. This would have helped us make sense of that sudden af revelation at the end of KH3. The fact that the Boy in Black is such a stark difference from any Xehanort we knew about definitely leaves this sense that there was so much we didn’t know about him. Learning that he really hated the Darkness creates the sense that there was something big in his past that motivated him to do this. Him realizing he misses Scala makes it seem like something happened to Scala in his lifetime that cemented his desire to go out and reset the universe.

How did he obtain No Name? What happens between Eraqus and Xehanort that makes them go from soft boys to practically war-hardened adults?

Put on a Happy Face

I mean, like a fellow member said in a thread months ago, I would kinda get Nomura in the sense that this is a plot more than a decade old. It can get tiring and boring, especially when you want implement ideas from a game you could never finish (Versus), into one that can act as a soft-reboot with what you wanted to establish (post-KH3).

It was a damn shame. KH3 ended on a better note than KH's I & II, but there was no buildup or momentum like the fights pre World of Darkness Ansem, and Zebra-Xemmas. Though Donald and Goofy shouting at you from the controller is peakest of the peak KH friendship. I got goosebumps, and still get them from remembering it.

I fear Scala may be a world lost to the darkness. Something tells me the Scala we went to may have be a sort of projection from Xehanort's memories or whatever. Perhaps we entered his heart? Perhaps Kingdom Hearts amplified his memories? Did we jump a Worldline where Scala exists? Or what if, not just people, but also Worlds can jump Worldlines? Or the hearts of worlds?

I think Xehanort's constant picking on KHx/Ux era knowledge may have detonated something in their friendship. I presume only Bluebloods are privy to that knowledge, and Xehanort may have violated some Keyblade Master traditions here and there in order to acquire that knowledge, and something tells me that No Name, besides being regarded as one of the most ancient Keyblades, could also be tied to something bad. I don't know, there's something about No Name that really gets the mystery and mysticism back from the first KH.

the only villain on staff

I mean, like a fellow member said in a thread months ago, I would kinda get Nomura in the sense that this is a plot more than a decade old. It can get tiring and boring, especially when you want implement ideas from a game you could never finish (Versus), into one that can act as a soft-reboot with what you wanted to establish (post-KH3).

Yeah, and even I believe that he got tired of it and knew the plot had been running on for too long. That didn't mean he had to turn KH3 into a game full of sequel bait. There was enough content to explore without needing to rely on sequel bait to create mystery within the plot.

I don't want to use it as an example, but I will because it's fresh on my mind. Endgame is a great example of how to utilize existing story to create new self-contained mysteries and story intrigue. KH3 almost had it with the idea of looking for Roxas and Terra, revisiting Saix' plan to betray the Organization, the betrayal of the other members, Lea vaguely remembering Xion, and Aqua, but then it rushes through like half of those stories or adds all of these sequel bait elements to it like Subject X/Skuld(?), the Black Box, and the New 7 PoH.

Or the rest of the time it is trying to confuse us for really no reason like with Dark Riku. First he's using data bugs so you think it could be Riku from the Datascape, but then he talks about fighting Sora so you think it is KH1 Riku, but then in the end it is...Replica Riku who thinks he's the real Riku...It's barely hinted at.

UGH. I'm going to stop thinking about it. It just makes me upset.

It was a damn shame. KH3 ended on a better note than KH's I & II, but there was no buildup or momentum like the fights pre World of Darkness Ansem, and Zebra-Xemmas. Though Donald and Goofy shouting at you from the controller is peakest of the peak KH friendship. I got goosebumps, and still get them from remembering it.

At the same time I'll always sorta be upset that there wasn't something after that were all of the guardians got to land a hit on Xehanort at the end. They were all fucked over by him personally in some way. It wasn't fair that they were only there after the battle happened.

It sorta had the same pacing of KH3D, but that game had a smaller cast to deal with, lol. So it worked in that game.

Yeah, there is. It's waiting there in the wings. Nomura just needs to let us have it.

I fear Scala may be a world lost to the darkness. Something tells me the Scala we went to may have be a sort of projection from Xehanort's memories or whatever. Perhaps we entered his heart? Perhaps Kingdom Hearts amplified his memories? Did we jump a Worldline where Scala exists? Or what if, not just people, but also Worlds can jump Worldlines? Or the hearts of worlds?

I'm asking how Xehanort becomes the one to wield it and for what reason. It was clearly bequeathed to him at some point, but it was also clearly a precious relic from the age of fairytales. It seems strange that it wouldn't have been passed onto Eraqus, so there is a reason why he obtains it.

My theory is that it has to do with the line of dialogue where he says "When the World needs a defender, they'll pick you, Eraqus." It's too specific of a line. Master Xehanort is too determined to fulfill his mission and to be the leader who ushers in a new, pure World, but also too easily convinced by Eraqus to let it all go.

So perhaps Xehanort WAS chosen and he failed, and determined to never fail again, created this plan to rewrite the World. Or it could be that Eraqus was chosen and failed, then let the Keyblade go.

Or maybe simply Xehanort was chosen to wield No Name and carry on that legacy, and Eraqus was chosen for another purpose. There are so many different scenarios. I want to know exactly what the truth is.

I think Xehanort's constant picking on KHx/Ux era knowledge may have detonated something in their friendship. I presume only Bluebloods are privy to that knowledge, and Xehanort may have violated some Keyblade Master traditions here and there in order to acquire that knowledge, and something tells me that No Name, besides being regarded as one of the most ancient Keyblades, could also be tied to something bad. I don't know, there's something about No Name that really gets the mystery and mysticism back from the first KH.